Thursday, 24 April 2014

SSMS Add-ons

At my presentation on SQL Server Management Studio at SQL Saturday in Exeter I promised to write some articles on Gethyn’s blog about the bits I didn’t manage to cover.

SSMS is a fantastic tool but many people and companies have found ways to enhance it to make it even more useful.At the Exeter SQL Saturday I was chatting with David Atkinson of Red Gate software about their add-ons to SSMS.

David told me about an exciting project that Red Gate have started called the SSMS Ecosystem Project. They have created a framework to make it easier for developers and DBAs to develop, share and manage SSMS add-ons.And the best news is that this framework is free.

Once you’ve created your add-in using the framework you can place it on their add-in directory so others can find and try it out. Red Gate are happy for you to use their API to create commercial tools as well as free ones.Red Gate consider this to be a work in progress, they intend to enhance their API and hope to create a distribution platform similar to the Visual Studio gallery where you will be able to discover and share your add-ons.

SQL Treeohttp://www.sqltreeo.com/wp/Enables users to create custom folders for databases, stored procedures, tables, views and user defined functionsThis is not an exhaustive list. I expect there are plenty of other tools available. Let us know if you have a favourite